Faithful fuel rise in Oklahoma foster families

Published 8:13 am Monday, July 11, 2016

OKLAHOMA CITY — Pastors across the state Of Oklahoma are urging their flocks to love their neighbors in a whole new way by opening their homes to foster children.

Nearly 820 families have signed up to foster children since Gov. Mary Fallin kicked off a program called Oklahoma Fosters in November, in hopes of enlisting 1,000 new families and reducing the number of children housed in emergency shelters.

Much of the campaign’s success is due to the organizing, advocacy and volunteerism of churches.

Chris Campbell, a former Tulsa minister who leads a non-profit that connects churches with foster efforts, said church leaders have long urged congregations to minister to orphans through adoption.

But many have just recently stressed the importance of fostering.

“Those efforts have definitely made families more open to the idea of foster care and adoption,” said Campbell, whose group, the 111 Project, aims to ensure that every child has a home. “I think it wasn’t that the churches didn’t want to help, it’s that they didn’t know how to help.”

In the past year, the state has recruited more than 1,070 new foster families. It now has 3,153 foster homes, said Sheree Powell, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Human Services.

In kicking off the foster initiative last fall, Fallin sent letters to each of the state’s 6,700 churches urging them to get involved, Powell said.

Faith groups are the force that pushed the state over its goal of enlisting 1,000 new families, she said.

“They’re playing a huge role,” she said. “Most of our recruits, at least our recent recruits, have come thanks to our churches presenting the need before their congregations.”

That was the case with Oklahoma City-based Life.Church, which ministers to more than 70,000 people in seven states through 219 services per week.

On Mother’s Day, its sermon, “How to Neighbor,” focused on the message of Jesus to love one’s neighbor, said Pastor Ryan Westrup, who works with the church’s Edmond campus.

The church also emphasized the number of children in the foster care system, and how its members can be part of the solution, he said.

Many of its campuses have held foster and adoption events to give families more information.

More than 2,000 members were eager to learn more. Of those, nearly 1,000 wanted to sign up as foster parents or join a support network, he said in an email.

Westrup said some of those people might have been called for the first time to support children.

“I believe it’s more likely that many have felt called for some time, and these events simply gave them the resources and knowledge they needed to get involved,” he said.

“Life.Church helped equip them, but God had already planted the seed.”

In two weeks after that sermon, Powell said her department received more than 320 inquiries about becoming foster or adoptive parents.

She doesn’t know how many of those people went on to sign up for a 60- to 90-day certification process, which involves background checks, a home study and training.

Not every church provides foster parents.

Some instead work to support existing foster or adoptive families.

For example, when Bethany’s Council Road Baptist Church learned that the state couldn’t afford to pay for a court-mandated drug test for a mother who was working toward being reunited with her children, its members picked up the tab, Campbell said.

As pastor at a Tulsa church, Campbell used to organize volunteers to show up at 2 or 3 a.m. to rock crying babies at the Laura Dester Shelter, relieving the workers there, he said.

The shelter housed as many as 100 displaced children at a time, as state employees scrambled to find foster families to take them.

“It just really broke me,” he said. “The reality was that I was completely ignorant about the situation of foster kids. In the middle of America, in the Bible Belt … we had a glaring problem that is a fixable problem in the middle of our backyard.”

Two years ago, 300 children were living in emergency shelters in Oklahoma. On Friday, the number was 80.

In November, the state closed one of its two largest shelters, in Oklahoma City.

And the Tulsa shelter where Campbell and others volunteered now has 10 to 15 children. Most of them have special needs.

Powell said the state is aiming to close that shelter, as soon as it can find places for those children.

Janelle Stecklein covers the Oklahoma Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jstecklein@cnhi.com or follow her on Twitter @ReporterJanelle.